Great importance in modern society is attached to the evaluation of certain actions of individuals. Every day each of us performs many acts, while giving an internal assessment of his actions. At the same time, each of us compares his actions to the scale of moral values of a civilized society. If the criterion of attributing acts to moral / immoral is studied by ethics, the mutual evaluation of actions and actions of people is included in the subject of sociology.
The social action problematics was introduced by Max Weber. First of all, the most important sign of social action is a subjective sense which is a personal comprehension of possible options for behavior. Secondly, an important conscious orientation of the subject on the reaction of others, the expectation of this reaction.
T. Parsons declared that the problematics of social action is connected with the following features:
- normativity –is connected with envy of generally accepted norms and values;
- voluntarism - connection with the will of the subject, providing some independence from the environment;
- the presence of sign-oriented mechanisms of regulation.
The fact that a particular action is possible only within the framework of society, that the social subject is always in the physical or mental environment of other actors and behaves in accordance with this situation, reflects the concept of social interaction. Social interaction can be defined as the systematic actions of subjects directed at each other and aimed at provoking a reciprocal expected behavior that involves renewed action. The interaction of individual subjects is also the result of the development of society, and a condition of its further development. The mechanism of social interaction includes individuals who commit certain actions, changes in the social community or society as a whole, caused by these actions, the impact of these changes on other individuals constituting a social community, and the reverse reaction of individuals. Interaction leads to the formation of new social relations.
Social interaction is a system of interdependent social actions; connected by cyclic causal relationships in which the actions of one subject are simultaneously the cause and effect of the response actions of other subjects. This means that every social action is caused by the previous social action and at the same time is the cause of the subsequent actions. Thus, social actions are linked in an indissoluble chain, called an interaction. Conditions for the emergence of social interaction are:
- the presence of two or more individuals which determine each other's behavior and experiences;
- making by them some actions that affect mutual feelings and actions;
- the presence of conductors that transmit these influences and the effects of individuals to each other;
- a common basis for contacts and interferences.
Social relationships are conscious and sensually perceived relations, sets of repeated interactions, related in their meaning to each other and characterized by appropriate behavior. Social relationships are divided into one-sided and reciprocal. One-sided social relationships are characterized by the fact that their participants put in them a different meaning: love of the individual can stumble upon the contempt or hatred from the object of his love. In this case, the behavior of participants will be correlated in meaning, since one acting individual assumes that the feelings inherent in him, are experienced by another partner or partners, and this expectation guides his behavior.
At the present time, a number of prominent sociologists believe that value is the basis for attaching certain colors and content to social interactions and making social relations out of them. It is the unequal distribution of values that relations of power and subordination, all types of economic relations, relations of friendship, love, partnership, etc. are built.
The structure of social relationships:
1) the subject is the parties between which relations arise;
2) objects are because of what the relations arise;
3) needs are relations between subjects and objects;
4) interests are subject-subject relationships;
5) values are the relationship between the ideals of interacting subjects.